The meagre 1,200-capacity Olympia might feel like a step down for Roan — this month the 26-year-old performed in front of the largest ever crowd at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, an estimated 110,000 people. Not that the Irish audience will lack for enthusiasm. Taylor Swift’s Dublin gigs sparked a frenzy earlier this year and Chappellmania is just as real.
The lack of tickets may not be garnering as much sympathy as it did when it came to Swifties, but it is causing mass hysteria among frustrated fans. Roan, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, has been working for the best part of a decade on what looks like an overnight success. She was thrust on to the phone screen of every Gen Zer when her single blew up on social media at the start of the summer.
This month, Ireland became the first country where the song topped the charts. Her album claimed the top spot a week after. It is tipped to be part of an all-female best album shortlist at the Grammys, alongside Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa.
In a summer dense with women in pop dominating the charts, there seems to be no saturation point for girly pop. But the grittier bumps of Charli’s brat, the lighter jaunts of Carpenter’s and even the melancholic whispers of Billie Eilish are a world away from the space Roan has carved out for herself. Her cornerstones of queer love, situationships and the guilt of leaving an old life behind show her as someone unsure of the world around her but.